Muse Group (MuseCY Holdings Ltd.)

Who owns Muse Group? Muse Group is a private company (MuseCY Holdings Ltd.) owned by founder Eugeny Naidenov, management, and private equity firm Francisco Partners.

Does Muse Group own Hal Leonard? Yes. Muse Group acquired Hal Leonard, the Milwaukee sheet music publisher, in a deal that closed December 1, 2023, backed by Francisco Partners.

Does Muse Group own Audacity? Yes. Audacity has been part of the group since 2020/2021 and remains free and open source under the GPL.

Where is Muse Group based? Limassol, Cyprus, with offices and subsidiaries in the United States, United Kingdom, and elsewhere. It employs roughly 300 people.

The group's origin is Ultimate Guitar, founded in 1998 in Russia by Eugeny Naidenov as a tab-sharing site for guitarists. It grew into the largest guitar tab community on the internet, with offices in San Francisco and later a global remote team.

The acquisition phase began in 2017 when Ultimate Guitar acquired MuseScore, the free notation program and its score-sharing site, adding professional developers to what had been a volunteer project. In 2020 and 2021 it added Audacity, the dominant free audio editor, and StaffPad, a stylus-based notation app. In 2021 the holdings were consolidated under Muse Group, headquartered in Limassol, Cyprus.

The Hal Leonard deal, announced December 1, 2023, was the landmark. The 76-year-old Milwaukee publisher, founded in 1947 and employee-owned for decades, brought publishing relationships with major artists and a catalog Muse Group now uses to feed licensed content into MuseScore.com and its education products. The group also launched MuseHub for plugin distribution and Audio.com for free audio hosting.

The company funds open-source development within its products and publishes community guidelines for its free platforms. Its Cyprus holding structure and the commercialization of community-built projects have been subjects of recurring debate within open-source circles.

Muse Group has faced criticism from open-source communities since acquiring Audacity and MuseScore, including disputes over telemetry, contributor agreements, and a 2021 privacy policy controversy that forced public clarification. Licensing practices on MuseScore.com, where user-uploaded scores sit beside licensed commercial content, have drawn publisher scrutiny and takedown disputes.